Even with the pitch clock, a baseball game can be a plodding affair, so you’ll have to forgive Juan Soto if, in the sixth inning of this one, he took his eyes off the action for a moment. He was leaning against the dugout rail, his New York Yankees on their way to a 3–2 victory over the Kansas City Royals to pull within a win of the American League Championship Series, and Anthony Volpe had just taken a sinker down the middle to run the count to 2–1. Soto dropped his head, then spotted something in his peripheral vision. Catcher Salvador Pérez had popped up and fired to second base.
“I was like, ‘Who’s running?’” says Soto now, laughing.
Speaking of plodding, that would be 34-year-old designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton, who might lose a footrace to an umpire. On average, it takes him 5.06 seconds to get from home to first, third worst in baseball behind a pair of catchers. According to Statcast, he cost his team four runs with his baserunning this year, worst in the sport. He has likely cost his team two more in the ALDS alone. Forget not giving him the green light to steal; the Yankees have taken down the traffic light altogether.
The Royals were as surprised as Soto. Stanton was at the cutout by the time righty John Schreiber delivered the pitch, and he was halfway to second by the time Pérez rose from his crouch. Stanton slid easily into second.
On Wednesday, he drove in the Yankees’ first run with a fourth-inning double. He gave them the go-ahead run with a 417-foot home run in the eighth. But after it was over, his teammates wanted to talk about his sixth-inning stolen base, the first one he had even attempted since 2020.
“That was probably my favorite thing,” says left fielder Alex Verdugo. “Because the homer, you expect it. The hard-hit balls, all the frickin’ 120 [mph]s, you expect. But I was like, ‘Man you got a stolen base in the postseason before me! I gotta take a bag now.’ That was unbelievable.”
“I expected a big day from him,” says third baseman Jazz Chisholm. Did he expect the steal? “No,” he says. “It was a surprise to all of us. But I’m happy he did it.”
“He sent a message right there,” says first baseman Oswaldo Cabrera. “He is here to help the team in any way he can. We were so happy to see him taking that base. The vibes that he created in that moment for us were so, so good.”
Oswaldo Cabrera talks about the @Yankees #ALDS Game 3 win and praises Giancarlo Stanton's performance pic.twitter.com/RaaXTvDFrz
— MLB (@MLB) October 10, 2024
In some ways, that moment was a long time coming. Stanton has not played a full season since the Yankees acquired him from the Miami Marlins in 2018—also the last year he stole more than one base. He missed nearly 40% of the games in the ensuing six years with mostly lower-body injuries: a PCL strain in his right knee in ’19; a left hamstring strain in ’20; a left quadriceps strain in ’21; right ankle inflammation and left Achilles tendinitis in ’22; another left hamstring strain in ’23 and yet another one in ’24.
When he is healthy, he demolishes the ball. Since Statcast began tracking such things in 2015, 24 balls have left bats at 120 mph or more. Stanton has hit 16 of them. So in an attempt to keep himself in the lineup, Stanton has begun basically strolling around the bases. That strategy puts him at risk of being thrown out at first on a line drive to the outfield, but he hits the ball over the fence often enough to make it worth it.
“It’s just something we’ve got to live with,” manager Aaron Boone said earlier this week.
But after Stanton drilled a single in the sixth, he and first-base coach Travis Chapman noticed that Schreiber was slow to the plate—and that no one was looking at Stanton. Schreiber had a big leg kick, and first baseman Yuli Gurriel was playing in front of Stanton in an attempt to cover ground with the left-handed Volpe at the plate.
“Hey, Big G,” Chapman said. “If you get a good jump, get it.”
Stanton’s primary lead—his distance from first before Schreiber began his delivery—was large enough that third-base coach Luis Rojas, watching from across the field, began to get anxious. “I was worried that he was so far,” he says. “But that’s why he was so far.”
As soon as Schreiber lifted his leg, Stanton took off. He beat the throw by a few feet. He allowed himself a brief smile, then a big grin when he returned to the dugout at the end of the inning and his teammates started going nuts. The reaction was “probably better than the homer, to be honest,” he says.
In addition to being hilarious, the stolen base was a good reminder that this team—which often lives and dies by the longball—can and should fight for every 90 feet. The Yankees will only go on the sort of run they are expecting if they can maintain that attitude, especially as long as center fielder Aaron Judge, who is 1-for the series, continues to struggle. The lineup needs to be willing to score runs in multiple ways.
The Yankees are more likely to see home runs than stolen bases from Stanton moving forward. Still, don’t rule out another swipe someday. Rojas says, laughing, “He [has the green light] now!”
